What happened
HISD's board of trustees voted to join the lawsuit in September, calling on the TEA to rectify what they and representatives of other Texas school districts have called an "unfair change" to how accountability ratings are calculated.
Trustees voted by a margin of 4-3 to approve joining the litigation, with trustees Robert Scarfo, Chris Parker and Mike Grabowski casting dissenting votes.
How we got here
The TEA began a refresh of its methodology for calculating these ratings in late 2021, sharing new benchmarks students must reach for schools to receive a certain letter grade. One of these adjustments raised the cutoff point for a district to receive an A rating based on the college, career and military readiness of students from 60% to 88%—a 28 percentage point increase.
District officials across the state have raised concerns about the impact of the changes to accountability ratings, as they are a metric used by school boards to address educational priorities year to year. It is also a performance measure used to gauge the quality of schools by their communities and prospective families.
What they're saying
During the board's Sept. 12 meeting, HISD Superintendent Elizabeth Fagen said the new changes will have the most impact on the district's economically disadvantaged schools.
"The most economically disadvantaged schools do the worst in this system," Fagen said. "That’s what every district is seeing. ... The campuses that have the highest free-and-reduced [lunch program] percents are going to have the biggest drops in their [State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness] scores."
Brooke Sjoberg contributed to this report.
